[SOLVED]podman systemd service deactivate

gabx · 2025-11-10 11:48:40

I am learning to create and use containers with podman.
In my opinion, everything has been set up correctly following arch wiki guide. The only thing I ignored was the part about Quadlet. But when using podman desktop, I can't start a service (in my case, a LLM model) with the error: No running container engine found.
So I checked the systemd service status and think I found the root of the problem.

Right after I start the podman.service, here is the output of the status command:

systemctl status podman.service
○ podman.service - Podman API Service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/podman.service; disabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: inactive (dead) since Mon 2025-11-10 12:37:10 CET; 7min ago
   Duration: 5.031s
 Invocation: 7207f5269dd641c4ab293e5ea9a28c30
TriggeredBy: ● podman.socket
       Docs: man:podman-system-service(1)
    Process: 509705 ExecStart=/usr/bin/podman $LOGGING system service (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 509705 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Mem peak: 17.1M
        CPU: 78ms

Nov 10 12:37:05 magnolia systemd[1]: Starting Podman API Service...
Nov 10 12:37:05 magnolia systemd[1]: Started Podman API Service.
Nov 10 12:37:05 magnolia podman[509705]: time="2025-11-10T12:37:05+01:00" level=info msg="/usr/bin/podman filtering at log level info"
Nov 10 12:37:05 magnolia podman[509705]: time="2025-11-10T12:37:05+01:00" level=info msg="Setting parallel job count to 85"
Nov 10 12:37:05 magnolia podman[509705]: time="2025-11-10T12:37:05+01:00" level=info msg="Using sqlite as database backend"
Nov 10 12:37:05 magnolia podman[509705]: time="2025-11-10T12:37:05+01:00" level=info msg="Not using native diff for overlay, this may cause degraded performance for building images: kernel has CONFIG_OVERLAY_FS_REDIRECT_DIR enabled"
Nov 10 12:37:05 magnolia podman[509705]: time="2025-11-10T12:37:05+01:00" level=info msg="Using systemd socket activation to determine API endpoint"
Nov 10 12:37:05 magnolia podman[509705]: time="2025-11-10T12:37:05+01:00" level=info msg="API service listening on \"/run/podman/podman.sock\". URI: \"unix:///run/podman/podman.sock\""

but just a few seconds later, same command will show the service has been deactivated:

systemctl status podman.service
○ podman.service - Podman API Service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/podman.service; disabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: inactive (dead) since Mon 2025-11-10 12:37:10 CET; 7min ago
   Duration: 5.031s
 Invocation: 7207f5269dd641c4ab293e5ea9a28c30
TriggeredBy: ● podman.socket
       Docs: man:podman-system-service(1)
    Process: 509705 ExecStart=/usr/bin/podman $LOGGING system service (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 509705 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Mem peak: 17.1M
        CPU: 78ms

Nov 10 12:37:05 magnolia systemd[1]: Starting Podman API Service...
Nov 10 12:37:05 magnolia systemd[1]: Started Podman API Service.
Nov 10 12:37:05 magnolia podman[509705]: time="2025-11-10T12:37:05+01:00" level=info msg="/usr/bin/podman filtering at log level info"
Nov 10 12:37:05 magnolia podman[509705]: time="2025-11-10T12:37:05+01:00" level=info msg="Setting parallel job count to 85"
Nov 10 12:37:05 magnolia podman[509705]: time="2025-11-10T12:37:05+01:00" level=info msg="Using sqlite as database backend"
Nov 10 12:37:05 magnolia podman[509705]: time="2025-11-10T12:37:05+01:00" level=info msg="Not using native diff for overlay, this may cause degraded performance for building images: kernel has CONFIG_OVERLAY_FS_REDIRECT_DIR enabled"
Nov 10 12:37:05 magnolia podman[509705]: time="2025-11-10T12:37:05+01:00" level=info msg="Using systemd socket activation to determine API endpoint"
Nov 10 12:37:05 magnolia podman[509705]: time="2025-11-10T12:37:05+01:00" level=info msg="API service listening on \"/run/podman/podman.sock\". URI: \"unix:///run/podman/podman.sock\""
Nov 10 12:37:10 magnolia podman[509705]: time="2025-11-10T12:37:10+01:00" level=info msg="Received shutdown.Stop(), terminating!" PID=509705  <<------
Nov 10 12:37:10 magnolia systemd[1]: podman.service: Deactivated successfully.  <<------

What makes podman being deactivated? (can't see anything in journalctl

Last edited by gabx (2025-11-19 12:29:53)

gabx · 2025-11-10 11:56:05

an old alias was found in my shell startup files which forced podman to use kata-runtime, which is obsolete. Removing this alias solved the issue

Last edited by gabx (2025-11-19 12:31:00)

Arch Linux

#1 2025-11-10 11:48:40

[SOLVED]podman systemd service deactivate

#2 2025-11-10 11:56:05

Re: [SOLVED]podman systemd service deactivate

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